• Submitted by: admin
• Travel and Tourism
• 04 / 04 / 2010

---

Cuban Americans spending big to visit family on the island are also taking with them tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise.

Maribel Pérez and her husband, Manuel Bustillo, live in a modest home in West Miami-Dade. He's an air-conditioning repair technician and she's a restaurant cashier. Between them, they earn about $40,000 a year.

But they managed to scrape together thousands of dollars over months to finance a once-in-a-lifetime 10-day trip to Cuba last year after President Barack Obama lifted travel restrictions to visit island relatives.

``We are still paying off our credit cards after the trip,'' said Bustillo, who said the family took $3,000 in gifts to needy relatives.

The Obama administration decision on travel to Cuba has triggered a flood of U.S. visitors to the island.

Today, more than 25,000 people travel each month to the island compared with less than 9,000 before the lifting of the ban.

The rise in travel appears to be boosting, albeit in small measures, the South Florida economy and the fortunes of thousands of Cuban families with U.S. relatives.

That's because the travelers are taking with them tens of thousands of dollars in
household goods and other merchandise for their cash-strapped families in Cuba.

Traveling to Cuba is still not as a simple as buying an airline ticket for much of the rest of the world.

Only those with relatives and others with U.S. permission can go there and only chartered flights are allowed under U.S. law.

Cuba travelers also face additional fees to get to the island, though they are not as exorbitant as some perceive them to be.

For example, beginning May 1, Cuban authorities will demand that foreign travelers carry medical insurance.

The Cuban government has yet to announce the actual fee, though U.S.-based travel agencies do not expect it to be more than a few dollars per passenger.

Although many Cuban Americans perceived Cuba plane fares as deliberately expensive to benefit the Cuban regime, a rough comparison of fares to Cuba and to other countries in the region show a similarity in prices.

Travelers to Havana pay between $300 and $350 for a round-trip ticket. A round-trip ticket to Santo Domingo can sell for about $318.

CUBAN REQUIREMENTS

Where costs increase are in requirements not issued by other countries. For example, Cuba requires that Cuban Americans who left the island after 1971 obtain a Cuban passport before arriving on the island since their U.S. passports will not be
accepted.

A six-year Cuban passport costs about $370 and must be revalidated every two years at $160 per revalidation.

A look at the Bustillo family's trip cost sheds light on the amount of money travelers must pay to travel to Cuba.

In all, Bustillo and Pérez spent about $7,000 when they, along with Pérez's 12-year-old daughter, Nisvelys, traveled to Pérez's family home outside Havana.

The round-trip tickets cost $1,444 or about $480 per ticket. Today's average round-trip fare: about $350.

The ticket price includes the Miami International Airport and federal taxes ($51.20). Airport services fee on departure from Cuba ($25) is charged separately.

Travel agencies pay between $125 and $130 per passenger to the Cuban government for rights and services and between $140 and $156 per chartered seat to the airlines. The Cuba charter companies have a thin profit margin on tickets but generally generate extra revenue from excess baggage.

The breakdown is comparable to a round-trip ticket, $392, from Miami to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Of that amount, $51.20 goes to MIA and federal taxes; $82.20 to Dominican Republic in taxes and fees.

The biggest expense for Bustillo and Pérez was not the plane tickets, but the $3,000 spent on clothes, food and other gifts they carried for relatives.

They spent that money in South Florida shopping malls, supermarkets and electronic stores.

``You have to take them things they don't have over there,'' said Pérez, whose mother lives in the family home in Quivicán, about 25 miles from Havana.

ECONOMIC BENEFIT

Executives in the South Florida Cuba travel industry said that the economies of both Cuba and the state of Florida benefit from the flights.

It was Bustillo's first trip to Cuba. Born in Colombia, Bustillo is entitled to go to Cuba under U.S. travel policies because they cover any U.S. citizen or legal resident who has relatives on the island.

His connection is his Cuban-American wife, Pérez.

She had visited Cuba before, but had not returned for several years because of the Bush-era restrictions that Obama lifted last year.

Bustillo, 47, said Obama's loosening of travel rules inspired him and his wife to book their flight last year.

It was also important for Pérez to visit her family because her father had died recently and she wanted to see how her mother, Teresita, was doing.

``It was a very emotional trip, and we got to see Cuba up close and personal,'' Bustillo said. ``It was quite an experience.''

BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND JUAN TAMAYO

Source: The Miami Herald